Home

Choose a Project: Ph. D. Research Home Page 1. Atmospheric CO₂ & Climate Change 2. Early Land Plant Analogues 3. Conifer Forests in a Polar Environment 4. Megaherbivores and the Superbiome 5. Live Fast Die Young 6. Atmospheric CO₂ and Agriculture 7. Uprooting of Urban Trees 8. C₄ Photosyhthesis in Alloteropsis 9. Modelling Antarctic Ice Sheets 10. Herbivory in Antarctic Fossil Forests

Personnel
Graduate Student:

Supervisors:

Stephen Hunter

Professor Jane Francis (Earth Sciences, School of Earth & Environment, University of Leeds)
Dr Alan Haywood (Geoscience Division, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge)
Professor Paul Valdes (School of Geographical Sciences, Bristol University)
Dr Richard Hindmarsh (Physical Sciences, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge)

Funding

This project is funded by NERC and is a CASE project with the British Antarctic Survey

Summary

What caused sea-level changes during Mesozoic greenhouse climates? The growth and decay of continental-scale ice sheets is regarded as the most plausible mechanism for producing large rapid eustatic changes in sea-level during ice-house times (Miller et al., 2003), yet the polar regions during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic have been traditionally reconstructed as being warm and ice-free (Huber et al., 2002). One possible solution to this paradox is that intermittent ice-sheets existed on Antarctica through much of the Triassic to Early Eocene (Frakes & Francis, 1988). If so, this has profound implications for our understanding of the Earth System in a greenhouse state, and specifically for the sensitivity of the cryosphere to warmer-than-present climatic regimes.

This project will use advanced numerical climate and ice-sheet models, evaluated against geological data, to quantify the nature and behaviour of an Antarctic ice-sheet under globally warm greenhouse conditions, similar to climates that characterised the Late Cretaceous. The research will investigate current hypotheses about the cause of sea-level fluctuations during the Cretaceous and will improve our understanding of the behaviour and sensitivity of the Earth's cryosphere during past greenhouse Earth conditions.

The project will involve the compilation of an extensive database of geological evidence for global palaeoclimates during the Maastrichtian. These data will provide both boundary conditions and evaluation data for the modelling studies. Fully coupled atmosphere-ocean General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments will then be undertaken to simulate the Late Cretaceous global climate. The evaluated GCM output will then be used to predict the form of an Antarctic ice-sheet that would be in equilibrium with the simulated climates for the Maastrichtian world.

This is a tied studentship with a larger NERC/AFI research grant - the main project involves the investigation of geological evidence for Maastrichtian cold climates in Antarctica.